ANTHOLOGY 1

[Socrates Arvanitakis]

Hello all,

This is one of my first works and I put it forward in this forum as a first submission for comments and constructive criticism.

What I hope is that people will look at the PDF full score file and form their opinions from there. The mp3 is only there as a sound reference. I am not a sound engineer or studio wizard, only a musician and I use Sibelius 6 to write music not for sequencers but for real instruments played by human performers, but it is very difficult to find some of those most of the time.

The best sequencers and sound samples in the market are very expensive and still never satisfy my ear although sometimes, if well programmed, they can full me. Still a sequence using the best sounds is only a fixed immovable realization of a musical idea, but real music is to me playing it live so that the original idea of a composer can be further developed through time and performers' consciousness.

This work is an anthology consisting of five short songs based on six fragments of poetry by Sappho of Lesbos (c. 600 BC). I set it in classical Greek (Aeolian dialect as written) for alto voice, classical guitar, flute, violin and cello and I provide approximate translations of the texts in modern English for guidance.

Thank you for your time.

ANTHOLOGY 1.pdf

1 MP3.mp3

[Lawrence Aurich]

Socrates,

    
Very nice work.  I enjoyed the mellow sound and the guitar.  This is obviously written by a guitar player as you give most of the good licks to the guitar.  I would also add that melodies are dominated by the chord structure.  Because this is a vocal piece I would put more emphasis on the voice parts and words.  If you want instrumentalists to play your music, you need to be more even handed with the good parts.  This is mostly a guitar solo with instrumental accompaniment.  For instance take about half of the guitar part and spread it among strings.  Give the melody to the flute or even cello.  What does the guitar do in the mean time?  Strum.  I might also double the vocal parts with strings or flute rather than guitar.  There's nothing wrong with repeating a vocal part with strings or flute. Your last movement is the best because it utilizes more of the instruments.   Finally, sing the words in your head, write them down, then adjust the chords to follow the vocal part.  This will assure a stronger melody.  Keep up the good work.

Lawrence

[Socrates Arvanitakis]

Thank you very much, Lawrence and Michael, for your valuable comments and suggestions.

Laurence, you spotted very correctly the ""guitarist's mentality" in the piece. I did actually write it for guitar and voice in the first place and later I added the three other parts for a live performance that was coming. In this arrangement it was received well by the audience, but I am still considering revision without altering much the guitar part which is, as Michael says, needed to provide the harmonic framework, (in my mind is also closer associated with Sappho playing her Lyre).

My attention is turning to the vocal part which seems to me to need more melismatic embellishment and I have deliberately left that option open by using relatively long note values in places.

Thank you both for listening and taking time to comment. :-)

[Rodney Carlyle Money]

If your attention is now turning to the vocal part you need to write out every little "mellybelly" embellishment and not rely on the ignorance of a classically trained vocalist and their lack of modal improv skills to make your piece work. "Deliberately left out, keeping it open" translates to either you are too lazy to figure out the notes, you need to do the research, or you cannot write anything down yet until you work with a vocalist who can help you compose the part. Think about who is going to perform this work. It's going to be classically trained singers who are used to singing note after note on the score.

[Rodney Carlyle Money]

By the way, Lawence is right.

[Rodney Carlyle Money]

By the way, be careful what you write concerning words. It's too much to go through now but for example, "Men call her the greatest lyric poet that the world has known.." stood out to me to be incorrect because according to Margaret Reynolds who says, " Sappho is now regarded as the greatest lyrical poet of ancient Greece..." Also "The mind of Sappho runs through all literature like a spangled thread" seems more like an opinion.

[Rodney Carlyle Money]

Michael, you need to remember something, he is composing a piece that he might want published one day and as someone who lives and breathes in that field I am trying to help him more than anyone on this forum so he can be taken seriously. And once a composer writes something as program notes it becomes part of the composition in every part and form so it must and should be addressed even when it concerns non music matters. As a composer who has writes program notes for publishers everything must be perfect and true especially when it comes from quoting history.

[Rodney Carlyle Money]

Well Truth is Jesus Christ, but I won't get into that, and perfection is what your scores need to be if you want your music to be successful through performance and publication.

[Socrates Arvanitakis]

Thanks for dropping in Rodney.

 

1. I don’t think that all trained vocalists lack improvisational skills, they are some quite competent at that, but any how I don’t intent them to improvise if I decide to carry on working on this piece, just to sing what I will write.
2. I am not lazy when there is work t be done nor do I need to work with a vocalist in order to write some more dots for her. I just expect that once a part is finished the performer owes to be able to perform it. I will be there for guidance on questions regarding interpretation only, as the English translations provided are quite inadequate, just ghosts of the original beauty of the text in Aeolian Greek of 2500 years ago.
3.  You may translate my statement in any way you want but still my statement says what it says, that's all: Left deliberately open for further melismatic development. Therefore I find your assumptions here incorrect.

Rodney Carlyle Money said:

If your attention is now turning to the vocal part you need to write out every little "mellybelly" embellishment and not rely on the ignorance of a classically trained vocalist and their lack of modal improv skills to make your piece work. "Deliberately left out, keeping it open" translates to either you are too lazy to figure out the notes, you need to do the research, or you cannot write anything down yet until you work with a vocalist who can help you compose the part. Think about who is going to perform this work. It's going to be classically trained singers who are used to singing note after note on the score.

[Socrates Arvanitakis]

SAPPHO

A New Rendering

BY

H. DE VERE STACPOOLE

LONDON

HUTCHINSON AND CO.

PATERNOSTER ROW

 

Take another look, please. This is the opinion of some other writer on Sappho and I only use it as a preface here because I happen to agree with it to some extend. It is a good insight into her presence in world literature. Of course I put it forward as an opinion, I never thought that this can be a literary doctrine.

Rodney Carlyle Money said:

By the way, be careful what you write concerning words. It's too much to go through now but for example, "Men call her the greatest lyric poet that the world has known.." stood out to me to be incorrect because according to Margaret Reynolds who says, " Sappho is now regarded as the greatest lyrical poet of ancient Greece..." Also "The mind of Sappho runs through all literature like a spangled thread" seems more like an opinion.

[Socrates Arvanitakis]

Thank you very much for your good intention, Rodney, it is much appreciated.

I am not sure whether you mean that the excerpt from the book by H. de Vere Stacpoole is a program note or the fragments of poetry are the programme note, or both.

As I said earlier the first one is a preface (a general statement on Sappho) to my score and the texts themselves are to me very much part of the music itself. The long and short syllables and the poetic meter already there have done a lot of work for me before I even put pen to paper. Don’t forget that we are talking about lyric poetry here, that is verses originally sang to the accompaniment of a lyra. The music itself is of course long lost (so is much of her poetry) but dealing with these old lyrical poets, I think, we tend to forget quite often that these people were not poets in the current sense of the word. They were also able musicians/composers who used to sing their creations to the accompaniment of an instrument. I just try to imagine what it would be like to listen to them and at the same time transform what I imagine into today's sound.

However all these things maybe, thank you for participating in this discussion and bringing up the questions that you did, thus giving me the chance to talk about them also.

Rodney Carlyle Money said:

Michael, you need to remember something, he is composing a piece that he might want published one day and as someone who lives and breathes in that field I am trying to help him more than anyone on this forum so he can be taken seriously. And once a composer writes something as program notes it becomes part of the composition in every part and form so it must and should be addressed even when it concerns non music matters. As a composer who has writes program notes for publishers everything must be perfect and true especially when it comes from quoting history.